International: Industry giants form alliance to take HD TV experience to the next level

Electronics and media giants like Charter Communications, JVC, Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America Inc, NBC Universal, Samsung and Sun Microsystems have come together to form the High Definition Audio Video Network Alliance (HANA), which will tap the rapidly growing HD market.

HANA members are working together to create standards-based design guidelines for secure High Definition AV networks that will help advance commercial deployment of products and services as well as enhance the consumer HD entertainment experience.

HANA compliant products will include HDTVs, Next Generation DVD players, personal video recorders, Set Top cable boxes and home theaters. The first commercial products are expected to hit the markets in the second half of 2006. The Alliance plans to facilitate compatibility among various manufacturers’ products through compliance testing and developers’ conferences.

HANA solutions will address the entire range of issues, including bandwidth capacity, quality of service, ease of use, content protection and time to market, ensuring that the high value HD content that consumers want will be available everywhere in their homes.

“Since HANA is a cross-industry effort with members from each of the impacted HD industries, we can achieve the ‘win-win’ necessary to commercialise HD networks. HANA is a milestone among industry alliances because we are starting in the living room, not the home office,” said Dr Heemin Kwon, President, HANA.

HANA’s mission is to create industry design guidelines utilising existing technology and specifications that will help enable consumers to view, pause and record 5+ HD channels simultaneously without compromising on service quality.

“We recognise the immense value that these groups bring to the HD industry,” said Kwon. “HANA is utilising their technologies to enable HD content sharing around the home like eliminating the confusing tangle of cables used to connect TVs with home theaters, DVD players and other consumer electronics products, and let consumers use a single remote to control them all.”

By including copyright detection technology, HANA can help consumers access their entire personal video content while protecting content providers from piracy. This will also help enable content providers to make new and exciting HD content available to consumers in a more timely manner.